Guardian 29,389 – Brummie

80 comments on “Guardian 29,389 – Brummie”

1. The dentists’ abbreviation and the Chinese measure of distance were unknown, but all else fell into place. I was sure the clue for PRAWN lacked a definition till the penny dropped, whereupon a smile was had. (I’ve known that hock is a wine, yet I’ve never come across it in this neck of the woods.)

   Very enjoyable, thanks Brummie & Andrew.

2. I’ve always liked the spare succinctness of your blogging style, Andrew, today’s included.

3. Like GDU@1, I’m not familiar with Chinese measures or dentist abbreviations, but the answers were clear, and LI is now hopefully filed away for future crosswords. Entertaining as ever from Brummie and laughed at 3d. 5d is now rightfully referred to as Eryri, of course. Thanks to Brummie and to Andrew for managing to provide the blog in less than ideal circumstances (PRAWN and hock in the explanation of 26 are the wrong way round as I’m sure others will note).

4. Always thought ‘an old besom’ was a (possibly feisty) woman; hey ho, ylayl. And I was well Brummed by 11ac, took ages, and crossers, to stop thinking triangles or models to go with scalar. Dnk sett was paving, and thought Yonkers was a suburb of NYC, but it’s called a city, so comprises suburbs plural (as does The City of Fremantle). Snowdonia was a gimme, thanks to the late mrs ginf’s Ellis Peters series about Henry Longshanks’s conquest of Wales (which made me sad). So, lots to go on with (and about 😉 ), thanks Brum and Andrew.

5. Found this rather a laborious solve this morning, fitting together clues piece by piece – CYGNUS and ASCENDANCY examples of this. Many unparsed, and ashamed to say I used to Reveal button on many occasions, though every time I had fortunately plumped for the correct answer. Hock could only be Pawn, but PRAWN could be eaten with just about anything, maybe. So didn’t find that one particularly fair. And a DNF as defeated by INHALE at the very end…

6. Thanks Brummie and Andrew
   I enjoyed this a lot more than often with Brummie. First pass of the acrosses only yielded DORIAN MODE (one of my favourites), but the downs went more easily. Other favourites included TROUBLEMAKER and SCRUM.
   I didn’t know LI, or get the Clinton reference.
   Welsh Nationalists will insist that SNOWDONIA is now called “Eryri”!

7. I parsed PUMA a bit differently as “Am Up” for the drugged state.
   Didn’t know LI the measure in LIFT.
   Favourite was HIDDEN AGENDA as you don’t often see a reverse hidden.

8. Thinking about it, ERYRI might become a useful word for compilers.

9. Thanks to Brummie and Andrew.

   Always been a challenge when first across clue ends up as LOI! I had also put 4,6 as my enumeration for DORIAN MODE on my anagram scrap paper which caused real headscratching. No quibbles and a lot of thumbs up.

10. Thank you Brummie and Andrew. This was right in the Goldilocks zone for me. Took me a while to get INHALE, though. The list of things Bill Clinton claimed he didn’t do is rather long!

11. 19 delayed me considerably, trying to fit “have sex with that woman” into 6 letters.

    Also, as others have noted on the Guardian forum, there is only one suburb of Yonkers.

12. I’ve never encountered up for drugged. High is pretty common and the meaning is similar. Is that in common usage in the UK?

13. Found this one a bit meh but I was stuck in A&E for 9 hours yesterday and did 6 boatman puzzles to pass the time so maybe too much of a good thing?

    Ticks for EMBODY & HIDDEN AGENDA

    Cheers A&B

14. Struggled a bit with NHO DORIAN MODE – I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for as I couldn’t make sense of the definition in the clue. Everything else solved neatly enough and INHALE was my very first thought on seeing the Clinton reference. BESOM, ASCENDANCY, PRAWN, DISARM, SCRUM, DRESS CODE, CONTENTS and CYGNUS earned my bigger ticks.

    Thanks Brummie and Andrew

15. Desmodeus @12: likewise, I have never encountered ‘up’ meaning drugs in conversation, in print or on TV etc. I can’t find a specific drugs reference in the three dozen or so adjectival/adverbial definitions in Chambers. The closest is ‘in an excited state’ but it’s a bit of a leap from that to ‘drugged’. It might be street slang, I suppose, and ‘uppers’ are certainly drugs.

16. Thank you Brummie and Andrew, I very much enjoyed this, especially the neat anagrams.

17. A steady solve apart from endways. I do not see it as meaning back to front more turned through 90 degrees whereas b-to-f would be 180. Also NHO Dorian Mode but seemed the only likely anagram once got the cross letters. I have heard of shoot up for injecting heroin but just accepted it was a bit of a loose clue as a few nearly always are 🙂

18. Tomsdad@3 “5d is now rightfully referred to as Eryri, of course.”

    No. It’s honestly not. As a welshman that happens to live in the national park, that’s one name we use for it, and mostly only the locals even then. Our “government”, originally an “assembly” of “members”, now insists on being the “Senedd” and exporting that name and expecting all to understand that dd is a character pronounced “th”, rather than a double-d. They have an inflated sense of their own importance and think that renaming things and insisting others comply asserts that authority.

    English speaking countries have anglicised names for things, that suit our spelling and mouth sounds, hence Munich and not Munchen.

    For otherwise, 24d really ought to be “里ft”

19. I agree with Giles@17 about the meaning of ENDWAYS – maybe that’s why like Matthew Newell@9 it was my last in too.

    I raised an eyebrow at C(anine), but I’m sure it’s in the Holy Book and therefore beyond criticism. Didn’t think the barre could also be the bar. Nor do I remember Peter Pan being so routinely shown ARMS AKIMBO as to make him a clue for the pose, but it couldn’t be anything else. I think I learned about LI from the Kai Lung stories, but it’s a very long time since I’ve seen it.

    Anyway, enough harrumphing and quibbling: I enjoyed both T’ROUBLEMAKER (Russian mint as described by a stage Yorkshireman) and the HIDDEN AGENDA, and the neat surfaces for SNOWDONIA and AGREED UPON.

20. Quite tough but also an enjoyable struggle to solve this.

    For 16d, I think there should have been a homophone indicator because ballet dancers practise at the barre not bar. I don’t have access to Chambers dictionary online but in any case, I don’t accept that bar is a variant of barre. Speaking as a former ballet dancer of course!

    Favourite: INHALE; HIDDEN AGENDA.

    New for me: HUTU; SETT = a granite paving block (for 27ac); CYGNUS; ROOTSTOCK.

    Thanks, both.

21. I’m not looking at any posts yet but I have nothing.

    Are there any anagrams or acrostics to get some letters on the board?

22. Steffen@21: try 5d for a well indicated anagram.

23. That was fun. Also not heard of DORIAN MODE or CYGNUS

    Liked: ASCENDENCY, ELOQUENT, AT THE BAR, BESOM BANDICOOT

    Thanks Brummie and Andrew

24. I also struggled with this, but then left it for a while and it fell in. Think I may have been overthinking.
    When HIDDEN AGENDA came up across the middle, I felt that Brummie might be telling us something.
    Couldn’t see a nina but we’ve been told it’s his 300th.
    I don’t know if it means anything, but it struck me that there were three words, with END in them.
    ENDWAYS, HIDDEN AGENDA and ASCENDANCY.
    And with the 100-year part of the clue for cygnus. The end of 3 centuries?
    Or is Brummie going to retire now he’s reached this milestone? End of the ways?

25. Some loose definitions, as others have pointed out, e.g. UP and ENDWAYS. FT would perhaps have been more clearly clued as a US measure of distance.

26. michelle@20
    HUTU
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide
    Sure you have read & heard about this genocide a lot but might have not retained the names of
    the tribes involved.
    ENDWAYS
    ‘Back to the front’ could mean ‘the back of something to the front of something else (end to end)’?
    Also, there is another meaning given in dictionaries: ‘with the end forward (as toward the observer)’.
    I think this could also work.

27. Liked this once I got started, which took a while, nothing on first read through. Agree with comments above however, and like others Clinton and Chinese measures were my last two, helped by my husband who lets me struggle and then kindly comes to the rescue when I’ve got all the crossers. Seems fair. Thanks Andrew for parsing, and Brummie for the puzzle.

28. I thought 28a might be better clued if it was ‘New York suburb’, as – if I’m right in my understanding of this – YONKERS is one suburb, rather than several?

29. AT THE BAR
    barre (Chambers)
    noun
    1. A horizontal rail fixed to the wall at waist level, which ballet-dancers use to balance themselves
    while exercising (sometimes bar)

    The blog says: The ballet equipment is more usually spelled barre, but bar is a variant
    I am restating it with some backup info.

30. Steffen @21: less clearly indicated but you might try staring hard at 13d

31. Many thanks Brummie. I really enjoyed this and hope that if there is a HIDDEN AGENDA (my favourite today) it does not involve retirement (see pdm @24). TROUBLEMAKER also made me smile 😎. Thanks Andrew, great job given the circumstances.

    Steffen @21 in addition to Gladys’s recommendation, 13D is also a nice anagram.

    [Belated thanks to FrankieG for the Father Ted and to quenbarrow for the lovely link yesterday].

32. PM@30
    Oh! Yea! ‘less clearly’!

33. Just about the Goldilocks level for me. Much enjoyed. Thanks both.

34. Thanks Brummie and Andrew. I liked rouble maker and hidden agenda was very tidy. I had ‘am up’ rather than MA for the state. I particularly liked the cluing for ascendancy – l seem to do well with these sort of clues. Don’t know if that pattern has a name in crossword world?

35. Tough one. I don’t drink wine, eat prawn, do drugs or have an interest in architecture. Saved only my encyclopedic knowledge of Chinese measures. Thanks to setter and blogger.

36. KVa@26
    re 21ac
    Ah, yes I have heard of the HUTU and the Rwandan genocide. At first I had entered HUTI (wrong spelling for HOUTHI) and then when I worked out it was HUTU, I forgot about the Rwanda connection.

37. Tim C and MartyBridge
    PUMA
    drugged state and AM UP: Isn’t there a part of speech mismatch in this parse?

38. MartyBridge @ 34

    I believe it’s a charade, as per definition 1

    The Quick Cryptic defines it as a combination of synonyms
    ‘Qualify to get drink for ID (8)’ gives PASSPORT (pass + port)
    but I don’t think it has to be only synonyms
    as in
    50 plus 50, or 500 for innkeeper
    yielding L AND L OR D

39. I believe this is Brummie’s 300th puzzle, in which case congratulations on a significant milestone!

40. MartyBridge@34
    I used to think of it as a ‘chainlink’, but, as per Dave Keene@38, ‘charade’ is better.
    A goldilocks puzzle for me too today.
    Thanks to A & B

41. [Yes, muffin, Tomsdad and Owain, Ellis Peters too called it Eryri, or similar spelling, as well as Snowdonia to make the link for the less informed. As I said, reading of its imperialisation felt sad]

42. Good spot Jay @39. Congratulations and thanks to Brummie.

43. Thanks for the blog, good set of clues , I had the wrong type of scalar structure in mind but none would fit the anagram, I put that one in last after I had done all the Downs. UP=drugged is pretty modern slang and may not have made the dictionaries yet , “high” is very out of date.
    CYGNUS contains Deneb which turns up quite often in puzzles, also Cygnus X1 is the first generally accepted black-hole observation.

44. Beaten all ENDS up by ENDWAYS. Not how I think of back to front, but I’m sure it’s in a dictionary somewhere.

    [Owain@18 – as an English born person who lived in Ceredigion for six years It’s nice to know I was not alone in being less than impressed with what I referred to as the language nazis in Cardiff. Or Caerdydd. Although being from near London, or Londinium, or Lundenwic, or Llyn Dain, it annoys me that the people here insist on calling it Londres. Seems we have to thank the French nobles who ruled England for that.]

45. [ENDWAYS reminds me of this story of the Ulm sparrow.]

46. Fun puzzle with a good variety of clues.

    My favourites were DORIAN MODE, TROUBLEMAKER, PRAWN, DRESS CODE and INHALE.

    Although I am an Englishman (living near Manceinion 🙂 ) I much prefer the euphonious Eryri to its prosaic English name. And if Ayers Rock can revert officially to Uluru, why not?

    Thanks to S&B

47. Hmmm. There were some nice clues here (19D made me smile) but I got almost nothing on the first pass, and had to write in then parse hopefully some of the elaborate charades. Overall, I felt like the juice was not worth the squeeze. Other opinions clearly differ. Hey ho, on to Thursday.

48. nametab@40: Nice to know I’m not the only one who had my own names for some clue types before learning the official ones (like a “read-through” for an answer hidden in two or more consecutive words).

    Any charade consisting of many particularly small and fiddly bits (like today’s ASCENDANCY) is of course a Lego clue.

49. Was I the only one who initially parsed 4d with reference to the film Scum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scum_(film)?
    While not dirty as such, it’s definitely gritty!

50. Fine clues here, and yes, Yonkers is as much a singular toponym as Brussels or Hastings.

    LI is well known to Scrabble players, at least the ones who bother to look up what the words mean.

    I do get uneasy about indefinite cluing such as “girl” for any number of names, “state” for any of 50 two-letter sets (plus the old-style longer abbreviations), but …

    hasn’t cluing the B in bonkers as “changed” without suggesting its replacement (be it a “middling mayor” or the ever-popular “unknown”), crossed some sort of Rubicon? In solving terms it’s not a problem; there are the GK and the crosser to guide you, but it felt off to me.

51. Andrew — I think the definition of 6dn LASH is “belt” (= hit) The wordplay would be L (Latin) + ASH (kind of tree).

    Steffen, have a go at 3dn, where the anagram is well indicated, thought the definition is rather weird.

    YONKERS is both a city and a suburb, being considered (according to Wikipedia) an inner suburb of New York City. It’s only 2.4 miles north of the northernmost point of Manhattan. Its name echoes New York State’s Dutch heritage.

    Thanks, Brummie and Andrew.

52. Thanks Dave Keene@38, nametab@40, and gladys@48 for the clarification – that’s handy to know 😊
    KVa@37 for sure, you’re right…l wasn’t happy with my parsing. Although maybe l would have drawled or mumbled such a thing during my teenage years when l was often ‘up’

53. Roger GS @50: You have answered your own question – “In solving terms it’s not a problem…”

    More precise Ximenean cluing is necessary for a barred puzzle with a lot of very unusual vocabulary and an irregular arrangement of crossing letters. But here the offending Y crosses with an accessible down solution and the clue can be solved without a more rigidly defined substitution.

    Although some solvers like to challenge themselves by attempting to solve each clue in isolation, it is a crossword after all. Personally, I’m comfortable with the vagueness of ‘boy’, ‘girl’, ‘state’ etc if the surface is good and there are enough other pointers to solve the clue.

54. Abject failure for me, even with people being extremely helpful.

    9a – how do you know to only use B from BOOK?

    14a – I don’t understand where HIDDEN comes from in the clue?

    Too many other questions to mention.

55. Steffen @54
    9 B for book is a standard abbreviation.
    14 how did you know it included AGENDA?

56. @55

    Thanks.

    I am lost here. I didn’t know AGENDA was part of the answer. I didn’t see it.

    Are there are words/abbreviations in the clue to suggest HIDDEN?

57. No. AGENDA is hidden in “stAG (ENDAngered)”!

58. Nice crossword, usual selection of clues I could parse but needed Google’s confirmation (eg LI in LIFT). TROUBLEMAKER my fave, and HIDDEN AGENDA nicely clued. LOI was ENDWAYS which annoyed me as I always start with the NW corner. Thanks Brummie.

59. Hi everyone, first time poster although I’ve followed the blog for some time. Firstly, congrats to my co-citizen on his 300th puzzle and a very fine one at that. Managed to solve it but I am still a little puzzled by the use of ‘gains’ in 27ac. Any help would be appreciated.

    Once again congratulations to Brummie and many thanks to Andrew for a fine blog.

    [For those unfamiliar with the Dorian Mode, here’s tune you might know which uses it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7ATTjg7tpE%5D

60. Surely, with reference to Bill Clinton`s claim, MARIMBAS OK* should result in an OBAMA SMIRK ?

61. [Some of the best folk songs are in the Dorian Mode. I have a vague memory of a musicologist looking at a collected folk song, by Cecil Sharp, I think, and saying “how can an uneducated peasant write a song in Dorian Mode when most music students don’t know what it is?”!]

62. Yes, YONKERS is a suburb, singular. And I don’t think it’s unfair, as it’s fairly well-known.

    DORIAN MODE’s scale is what you get when you sit at the piano and play the white keys starting and ending with D. It’s similar to minor, and common in folk music. The sea chanty What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor? is the classic example. [If you start on E, you get Phrygian Mode, F gives you Lydian, and G gives you Mixolydian. C is major (in the language of modes, Ionian) A is natural minor (Aeolian), and B is dissonant, so rarely used (but, looking it up, it’s called Locrian)]

    Edit: that clearly took too long to type.

63. Brummie@59 it is gains in the sense of reaches , it is saying do the wordplay and that will reach the definition. .
    I hope you continue to post, everyone is welcome and all opinions are worth reading.

    There must be different versions but surely it is – What shall we do with a drunken sailor ?

64. Roz @63, thank you very much – all clear now!

65. [ Milan Kundera’s first novel , The Joke , contains a long digression on the development of Moravian folk music and the use of Dorian, Aeolian etc modes by “uneducated” peasants.
    King Penguin edition 1983, ISBN 0 – 14 -006415 – X , Part Four . ]

66. 3d I wondered if the hyphen between Pan and style referred to Gangnam style music which is also apparently called Pan , and involves dancers putting their hands on their hips!
    I don’t ever remember the “real” Peter Pan doing it as he was always flying around!

67. Shirley@66 in the famous Emmeline Pidgen illustration , Peter Pan is stood on a branch , arms akimbo.

68. Thanks Roz@67, but why the hyphen?

69. Not sure , in the paper style appears on the second line after Peter Pan- .
    Maybe it is indicating one phrase ” Peter Pan-style” , it just looks funny because Peter Pan is two separate words.

70. On my printout it’s Peter Pan-style, on one line.

71. -style is a suffix, ‘(in a manner) characteristic of or befitting——’.

72. [ BTO was a great Canadian band. Randy Bachman became a guitar guru and promoted the genius of another great Canadian guitarist, Lenny Breau. Worth checking him out if you’re into jazz guitar. ]

    [ mrpenny@62, I once made up a clever mnemonic for the modal scales, but now I can’t remember it. ]

    Three hundred cheers for Brummie, and thanks also to Andrew for the blog.

73. me @72,

    Before anyone says “what’s that all about?”, my comment at 72 about Bachman Turner Overdrive etc., pertained to Monk’s puzzle 17,741 in the FT. Sorry for the confusion. (I didn’t notice until it was too late to edit.)

74. B(nh) @59 welcome to a fellow Brummie, although I wasn’t born here I have lived for a long time. Thank you for the earworm. Do keep posting 😎.

75. cellomaniac@62 My mnemonic for the modes is
    Aeolian is on A
    Dorian is on D
    and nobody uses the others.
    (actually Mixolydian is fairly common too.)

76. Congrats to (the other) Brum for a popular debut, and ta for the Santana link. Nice to learn why that track sounds like it does.

77. Thanks both. An enjoyable crozzie for me anyway.

    The DORIAN MODE is something of a thorn in my side. Many (many) traditional Irish and Scottish tunes are in the Dorian mode, usually (but not exclusively) ascribable to E minor and A minor. When these are presented in musical notation the key signature indicated is invariably that of G and C respectively (as if they were in Aeolian mode), when the correct key signature (because they are in Dorian) would be D and G respectively. But you try telling that to the young people of today! Ooh yes….

78. I support Mr Penney @62 and others preceding him: Yonkers is a suburb not a collection of suburbs. My assumption when reading the clue was that there was a copyediting error, with a missing apostrophe in “suburbs”.

79. Gladys@48: too late a post to be noted, I imagine, but ‘Lego’ is neat

80. Just came here to check that it really was c for canine. Enough for me to not bother with the rest of the puzzle I’m afraid.

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